The Governor of South Dakota Takes a Shot at the Vice-Presidency - doggerel

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 The Governor of South Dakota Takes a Shot at the Vice-Presidency

                        Who is South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem? Dog controversy, more to know (usatoday.com)

Blazing a trail of death and bloody fur

She shot her dog, her goat, three horses too

Somehow they failed her, and so, we must concur  

She executed them in a bloody coup

When her family's animals disappoint her

She shoots them; she feels that’s her duty to do

Silencing each substandard bark, bleat, and purr -

Now what if she becomes disappointed in 

                                                you?

Let's Meet Again Next Week or Next Life - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Let’s Meet Again Next Week or Next Life

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 32

 

To ask to be remember’ed is good

Both for the humble asker and for the asked -

For both will pause to consider mortality

And both will pause to enjoy the happy now

 

We understand this world will pass away

That all created things must collapse and die

And yet we are promised them back again

And each other too, in saecula saeculorum

 

Then, yes, please, do remember me, if you would -

To ask to be remember’ed is good

Let Us Proceed to Sonnet 32 - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Let Us Proceed to Sonnet 32

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 31

 

There is a reason why Boris Pasternak

Did not recite Shakespeare’s Sonnet 31

To the Soviet Writers’ Conference in ’37 -

 

It’s a mess

Let Us Proceed to Sonnet 32 - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

Let Us Proceed to Sonnet 32

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 31

 

There is a reason why Boris Pasternak

Did not recite Shakespeare’s Sonnet 31

To the Soviet Writers’ Conference in ’37 -

 

It’s a mess

While Clenching Their Fisties - poem

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

While Clenching Their Fisties

 

Old men do not now argue politics

At the coffee table in the grocery store

Old men, like some university students

Simply say what they are ordered to say

 

By voices bellowing from Orwellian telescreens

 

While clenching their Trumpy-grumpy fisties

When to the Sessions of Sweet, Noisy Thought - poem

 

 

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

When to the Sessions of Sweet, Noisy Thought

 

Cf. Shakespeare, Sonnet 30

 

I don’t need to summon up remembrances

They simply wander in uninvited

In death just as they did in life, good friends

To sit together with our jokes, our drinks, our pipes

 

We still argue with each other, our minds

So familiar after all those happy years

Thesis, antithesis, and Dunhill tobacco

Ice cubes rattling in the soft summer dusk

 

Lewis and Tolkien show up late, stern Milton too

Remembrances? Not really – we are forever here

 

 

In Moscow, 1937, during the annual Soviet writers’ congress—a time of severe purges—Pasternak took a courageous stand. Amidst the dull, regime-prescribed speeches praising Leninist-Stalinism, he did something extraordinary. He recited Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare:

 

“When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear times’ waste.”

 

The impact was profound. All two thousand writers in the hall rose to their feet, joining Pasternak in this act of defiance. The number “30” became a symbol of resistance, a testament to the enduring power of poetry and memory.

 

Introducing a Sunday Series from Douglas Murray: Things Worth Remembering | The Free Press (thefp.com)

 

Those Who Straddle the Temple Walls - poem

  

Lawrence Hall, HSG

Mhall46184@aol.com

 

 

Those Who Straddle the Temple Walls

 

 

“Choose you this day whom you will serve”

 

-Joshua 24:15

 

 

For those who are desperate to be accepted as cool –

 

You cannot straddle the walls of the holy Temple

You cannot straddle the barbed wire of Auschwitz

You cannot straddle the banks of the Red Sea

You cannot choose two sides and call them one

 

Since the Hitler time there have not been two sides

 

You cannot wear both the tallit and the snakeskin

You cannot break bread with your grinning executioners

You cannot dance to circled drums and bullhorn chants

You cannot forswear your family murdered in the gas chambers

 

Since the burning time there have not been two sides

 

He who chooses the fashionable, the clever, the cool

Chooses to be a kapo, a funktionshaftling

His people will despise him, so too his masters

                   (Who in the end will kill him in his shame)

And his memory will be a curse, not a blessing

 

But you –

 

Choose bravely so that your name will be written in The Book

And written in the hearts of your proud descendants